Elin Hilderbrand - 28 Summers

…late-night conversation with an intimate friend revealed a shocking secret…this friend, let’s call her “Violet,” has been conducting a clandestine relationship over the course of two decades that she calls her “Same Time Next Year.” She and her lover meet for one long weekend each year, then they part and do not communicate—no calls, no texts, no e-mails—until the following year rolls around.

At first, I was scandalized. (“Violet” is single, but her lover is very, very married.) However, the more I ruminated upon her confession, the more I think it sounds kind of…heavenly.

It does sound heavenly, Ursula thinks. She could only too easily see conducting such an affair with Anders, were he still alive. He might have married AJ, and Ursula would still be with Jake, but she would meet Anders in Las Vegas every spring and they would go to that bar that they went to during the Umbrecht Tool and Die case and sing karaoke. They’d have dinner at the Golden Steer and go dancing at Hyde as they had that one memorable night, then they’d make love in a suite overlooking the Bellagio fountains.

If Anders were still alive and Ursula could pull this off, she would come back to Jake and Bess feeling so…refreshed, so energized, so grateful.

This, too, is a point Leland explores in the article. Is monogamy in long marriages an unrealistic expectation? So many people fail at marriage. What if it’s not the participants but the rules that are to blame? Is it possible that a short, tidy affair like the one “Violet” enjoys is the answer? Violet and her lover meet at the beach somewhere. They sail; they take walks and collect sand dollars; they watch movies; they eat Chinese food and read each other the fortunes from their fortune cookies.

Ursula pulls back like she’s been stung. Reads that again.

Sand dollars? Fortune-cookie fortunes?

Leland’s intimate friend. “Violet” is a made-up name.

Ursula sets down her iPad. She feels like she’s going to vomit. But wait, wait. This is a classic case of Ursula getting ahead of herself—and hasn’t her newly hired life coach, Jeannie, provided Ursula with strategies for coping, and isn’t one strategy with stressful situations to take things slowly and methodically rather than running around like her hair is on fire?

Sand dollars. Fortune-cookie fortunes.

Years and years ago, after Jake left PharmX and contracted that staph infection, Ursula had been hunting through his desk looking for his COBRA information so she could pay the bill for his hospital stay, and she had come across an interoffice envelope that just looked…strange. When she felt it, it was bumpy. She had opened it and found three sand dollars and a handful of fortune-cookie fortunes. Those two things. Only those two things.

Coincidence?

One long weekend per year—Labor Day weekend.

For over two decades—yes, at least.

On the beach—the cottage on Nantucket.

Leland’s intimate friend “Violet”—Mallory Blessing.

Ursula combs through the years methodically, or as methodically as she can under the circumstances. Without even realizing it, she has walked to the edge of the bluff. She needs to catch the breeze. Her arms feel numb, like a doll’s arms. There was the year Ursula went to Newport alone because Jake refused to cancel his trip to Nantucket. There was the year they pushed up Bess’s christening. His own daughter’s christening! He never missed his weekend on Nantucket. It was sacred, he said, his time with Cooper, with the guys. And yet, Jake hasn’t seen Cooper in Washington recently as far as Ursula knows. And then he’d refused to go to the funeral—the funeral where Ursula met Leland and learned that Leland and Mallory had been best friends growing up.

Intimate friends.

Ursula needs to call someone, but who?

Leland? she thinks. No; Leland would, as a journalist, protect her source.

Ursula dials Cooper at work. He’s the current administration’s new director of domestic policy, a huge, demanding job, and Ursula has meant to congratulate him, though the lines between the legislative and executive branches are blurry. But she’s reaching out now on a personal matter, so there will be no ethics breach.

Even so, it’s hard for her to get past his secretary, Marnie; Marnie obviously knows that Ursula is a United States senator and any discussion of business has to be scheduled, which this hasn’t been. Ursula says she’s calling about a personal matter. Her husband, Jake McCloud, went to Johns Hopkins with Cooper; they were fraternity brothers.

“They were?” Marnie says. “Mr. Blessing has never mentioned that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t lie,” Ursula says. Her tone is peevish, which will only reinforce her reputation as being somewhat bitchy (maybe more than somewhat; maybe she’s a bona fide insufferable bitch, which is why her husband has been cheating on her for more than twenty years). “They were in Phi Gamma Delta, Fiji. Jake was Cooper’s big brother.”

Marnie sighs. “He does talk about Fiji,” she says. “But I still can’t help you. Mr. Blessing is on his honeymoon this week.”

“Honeymoon?” Ursula says. Another honeymoon? “Well, good for him. I hope they went someplace nice.”

“St. Mike’s,” Marnie says. “Should I tell him you called? Or—”

“Might you give me his cell number?” Ursula asks. “It’s a rather urgent personal matter.”

“I’m sorry,” Marnie says. “I can’t do that.”

Ursula appreciates Marnie’s discretion even though she’s desperate to talk to Coop. “Yes, please, then,” she says. “Tell him I called.” Ursula hangs up. What next? Somewhere she used to have the number of the cottage on Nantucket. She could call and see who answers. If Mallory answers, Ursula will…what? Ask her if she’s been conducting an affair with Jake for the past twenty years?

Ursula decides to give it a shot. What choice does she have? The number isn’t in either of her phones so she Googles the white pages and punches in Mallory Blessing, Nantucket, Massachusetts —but there’s no listing.

Of course there’s no listing. It’s 2015. Everyone got rid of landlines ten years ago.

Another honeymoon. On St. Mike’s—St. Michael’s, on the eastern shore of Maryland. There’s only one place that anyone would honeymoon on St. Mike’s, right? The Inn at Perry Cabin.

The woman who answers at the reception desk sounds young and bubbly, which is a good sign. “Good morning, the Inn at Perry Cabin, how may I direct your call?”

“Yes, good morning, this is Senator Ursula de Gournsey.” Ursula pauses. Please let this young woman follow politics. “I’m trying to reach Cooper Blessing. I believe he’s there on his honeymoon?”

“Good morning, Senator! Yes, he is. I’ll just need you to provide his room number so I can connect you.”

“I don’t have the room number,” Ursula says. “I didn’t anticipate having to call him this week but something urgent has come up. If I leave a message, will you please make sure he sees it right away?”

The desk clerk says, “Ohhhhmmmmm.” She pauses. “I suppose I can just put you through. Please hold, Senator.”

The phone starts to ring and Ursula wonders how she became a woman who would interrupt someone’s honeymoon to ask about her own husband’s possible infidelity. She should hang up! But she can’t. She needs to know.

A groggy Cooper answers the phone. “Hello?”

She’s woken him. Of course she’s woken him; it’s just after nine in the morning. She tries not to picture Cooper naked and hungover beneath the inn’s featherlight comforter, lying next to whatever poor woman has just become the fourth—fifth?—Mrs. Cooper Blessing.